5 Fantasy Baseball Strategies

Every fantasy manager has his or her own fantasy baseball draft strategy.   Which ones work, which ones don’t?  The biggest mistake fantasy owners can make is not having a strategy.   For every draft that you do as a fantasy baseball manager you need to have a strategy, and stick with it.  So with out further ado here are five strategies that I have used to win countless championships.

 

The balanced team or “average Joes” strategy:  This is where you only draft players that contribute in all five categories.  You don’t try to outright win any specific category, but at the same time you don’t give up on any either.  Through the first 10 rounds you should draft the best stat contributors at each position.  You want batter that contributes in all 5 categories, not just home runs and RBI’s.  Once you hit the 10^th round you need to look at your current situation and see where you have major holes.  Once all holes are filled in you can continue drafting players that will contribute in as many categories possible. 

 

Highest Rated Player Strategy:  Lets face it, anyone that plays fantasy baseball knows whom the studs.  This strategy means exactly what it sounds like, you always draft the highest rated player, without paying much attention to position or categories, if they are ranked high, you draft them.  In order for this draft strategy to work your league needs to be incredibly active, and needs to allow trades because in order for you too fill positions you are weak in you will be trading.  Because you always drafted the highest rated player you will have some extra studs at each position, use this to your advantage to get the reaming positions you still need.

 

Offense sells tickets (defense wins championships):  This strategy means you completely forget about pitching till the later rounds, probably wont draft a pitcher until the 10^th round at the earliest.  Hitters play everyday and score on a daily basis.   The best starter in the league will only contribute every fifth day.  You will not be drafting a pitcher until all 9 hitting positions are filled. 

 

Position Scarcity:  This strategy entails the most research on your part.  You will need to not only look at rankings overall but also for each position as well.  In the opening rounds you will be drafting players at positions that have very few superstars.  Some examples of such positions are catcher, shortstop, and closer.  Once you have a “superstar” at each of the “scarce” positions you will draft players that fill out the rest of your roster. 

 

Punt Strategy: This is a strategy that is often frowned upon by the fantasy baseball experts.  However when used correctly it is a force to be reckoned with.  A fantasy manager using this strategy will punt or give up on a scoring category to try and dominate in the other categories.  For hitter this is usually steals, pitchers usually give up on saves.  This is not a great strategy to begin the draft with, but if you are getting towards the 7^th round and you are noticing some categories you are weak in you may want to give up on trying to find some steals and concentrate on more home run hitters and RBI machines. 

 

These are just some of the basic strategies used in fantasy baseball drafts.  In the upcoming posts I will be going over ways to use each strategy and how it applies to this years player pool.